Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean

by Carolina López-Ruiz

The first comprehensive history of the cultural impact of the Phoenicians, who knit together the ancient Mediterranean world long before the rise of the Greeks.

Imagine you are a traveler sailing to the major cities around the Mediterranean in 750 BC. You would notice a remarkable similarity in the dress, alphabet, consumer goods, and gods from Gibraltar to Tyre. This was not the Greek world—it was the Phoenician. Based in Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and other cities along the coast of present-day Lebanon, the Phoenicians spread out across the Mediterranean building posts, towns, and ports. Propelled by technological advancements of a kind unseen since the Neolithic revolution, Phoenicians knit together diverse Mediterranean societies, fostering a literate and sophisticated urban elite sharing common cultural, economic, and aesthetic modes.

The Phoenician imprint on the Mediterranean lasted nearly a thousand years, beginning in the Early Iron Age. Following the trail of the Phoenicians from the Levant to the Atlantic coast of Iberia, Carolina López-Ruiz offers the first comprehensive study of the cultural exchange that transformed the Mediterranean in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Greeks, Etruscans, Sardinians, Iberians, and others adopted a Levantine-inflected way of life, as they aspired to emulate Near Eastern civilizations. López-Ruiz explores these many inheritances, from sphinxes and hieratic statues to ivories, metalwork, volute capitals, inscriptions, and Ashtart iconography.

Meticulously documented and boldly argued, Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean revises the Hellenocentric model of the ancient world and restores from obscurity the true role of Near Eastern societies in the history of early civilizations.

Genres: History, Ancient History, Lebanon, Nonfiction, Archaeology

384 pages, Hardcover

Published December 14, 2021

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive overview of the role played by the Phoenicians in the creation of a Mediterranean space in the first half of the first millennium BCE. Their trading posts and colonists covered almost all shores of this great inland sea. Carolina Lopéz-Ruiz (University of Chicago) emerges as a fervent advocate of the thesis that the Phoenicians were the real disseminators of high civilization. In the past this has been swept under the carpet in our classical historiography by our idolization of the Greeks, and by the fact that the Romans systematically erased all traces of the Phoenicians after the elimination of Carthage (which started as a Phoenician colony). I am not well-versed enough to be able to judge it, but my impression is that Lopéz-Ruiz goes a bit too far in her zeal to rehabilitate the Phoenicians. But in any case, this is a solid work, with a sometimes very theoretical approach, and unfortunately far too few illustrations. More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

“All history is revisionist history” (after James M. Banner Jr.), meaning that every historian always tries to correct the vision of predecessors. Whether this is true or not, I will not discuss here, but in any case: in terms of revisionism, the Spanish-American historian Carolina Lopez-Ruiz really goes all the way. She wants nothing less than to thoroughly correct our view of ancient history, especially for the period between 1,000 and 500 BCE. Her introduction puts it best: “This book will argue that it was the(se) Phoenicians who set in motion the new connectivity networks and to a great degree created a first, truly interconnected Mediterranean. They paved the way for peoples east and west to join in this very first proto-urban, Mediterranean-wide koine of the Iron Age, and ultimately to stride onto the stage of history, even if in many cases we have lost those groups’ testimonies and so cannot easily hear their voices.” In other words: Bravo Phoenicians!, and that fully covers the content of this book.

To begin with, Lopez-Ruiz fiercely criticizes her colleagues who dispute that the Phoenicians were a people. This refers to a debate that has been going on for several years. The Phoenicians were indeed never a political entity, and saw themselves primarily as inhabitants of a particular port city (Sidon, Tyre, etc.). But they did share a large degree of cultural unity, were almost all active in maritime commercial trade, and they were also seen as a people by the outside world (especially the Greeks). As far as I can tell, both sides are somewhat right. I therefore use the description “The Phoenicians” here as a pragmatic collective noun.

But for Lopez-Ruiz, this debate is about much more than a matter of naming. For her, the Phoenician identity is crucial. At every opportunity, she points out how Western historiography has misunderstood the Phoenicians, as a consequence of “Hellenocentrism”: although Greeks and Phoenicians were active in many places in the Mediterranean (sometimes as competitors, sometimes as allies), it is almost only the Greek archaeological and textual indications that have been recognized and acknowledged. In addition, after the Roman victory over Carthage, many traces of Phoenician origin were destroyed, which partly explains why we have so few (literary and other) texts of Phoenician origin. And as a result, the contribution of the Phoenicians has never been fully appreciated. If we are to believe Lopéz-Ruiz, this was not only a matter of short-sightedness and prejudice, but even of ill will.

Because that is something that is striking: the author is very convinced that she is right, to such an extent that her argument becomes really pushy in some places. That is a pity, because I do think that Lopéz-Ruiz is on to something and that the Phoenician role was considerably greater than has been assumed up to now. And also that it can clarify certain gaps or mysteries that we are still struggling with. Take the origin and uniqueness of the Etruscan culture in Northern and Central Italy: the wildest theories have been circulating about this for 150 years; but the Phoenician contribution as defended by Lopéz-Ruiz could well provide a decisive explanation. But it also needs to be said that Lopéz-Ruiz's argument does not sound convincing in all cases: sometimes she simply appeals to the lack of concrete evidence to conclude that the Phoenician explanation is the best option.

The author does her best to present her material as comprehensibly as possible. But here too a warning is appropriate: this is a rather academic study, which also involves quite a bit of theory. For example, in many places Lopéz-Ruiz goes deeply into the whole Orientalization discussion. That is a persistent debate that has been raging in circles of art historians and archaeologists since the end of the 19th century. The question is how artistic motifs that are typical of the Near East flowed through to the West, to the Greeks, Etruscans and other Mediterranean cultures. Here too, according to Lopéz-Ruiz, Hellenocentrism plays tricks on us, and it is the Phoenicians who have been the determining factor in the spread of the Eastern heritage, and who have also kneaded it in their own very own way: “what we see as orientalizing cultures overlap with interaction between Phoenicians and emerging cultures across the Iron Age Mediterranean that strove to “catch up” to the older urban and literate Near Eastern civilizations.” That may be a clear statement, it is accompanied by so many nuances and theoretical facets that its treatment is not always easy to follow.

So there are some caveats, but that does not detract from the fact that this is a really interesting study that could potentially represent a breakthrough in a new view of the ancient history of the Mediterranean.

[lil' full glass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Easy to read and digest. the format explains a complex topic with ease. i learned an enormous amount, and it offers avenues for further research.

Highly recommend for anyone interested in ancient globalization and trade!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a scholarly approach to the argument that the Phoenicians were responsible for the making of the history of what is oftentimes called "Western culture." Her work is at the core of the long-lasting debate about these origins and just how much of an influence these peoples had on the empires around them.

For several decades the opinion prevailed among scholars that these origins have to be sought in Greek culture at the exclusion of any other Western or Oriental, more specifically Phoenician, influence. López-Ruiz works to prove that the Phoenicians were real players in the formation of Mediterranean world, and by extension, “Western” culture. She argues that their influence was either sidelined or altogether rejected by scholars while Greek and Roman culture was overstated. I was hoping that she would go into myth, and how the stories of these people were connected to both east and western ideas and religious beliefs. This book did not get into this, and so I was disappointed. There were still bits that I did enjoy, and I will post them in this review when I get the chance.

[sam tannehill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is pretty interesting in that the author is making a novel case that the Phoenician people played a larger part in the formation and structuring of cultures across the Mediterranean, and hopes that research will continue to reveal more and the important contributions of the Phoenicians. But this book is not action packed. I did like how the author organized the book, and she slowly moves close and closer from the fastest reaches and influences of Phoenician outposts to their origin in the land of Canaan, at their capital cities of Tyre and Sidon. I wish there were more pictures.

[Amit Keren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough and well researched although at times a bit defensive

The book is very well researched and packed with a lot of information and references that take time to get through. There was a bit too much defensiveness for me; maybe this was the result of how the Phoenicians are misunderstood and misrepresented in history.